DA40 Adding the extended luggage compartment

[Lance Murray]

I just had my airplane weighed as I have had several modifications. I'll post the info when I get to it. 2002 40.238 steam gage airplane with 4-way baggage, larger rudder, MGTOW increase, Hartzell 2-blade propeller

[DaveS1900]

I just had my airplane weighed as I have had several modifications. I'll post the info when I get to it. 2002 40.238 steam gage airplane with 4-way baggage, larger rudder, MGTOW increase, Hartzell 2-blade propeller

Lance, How did you get the large rudder? Installed 50 gal tanks?
Dave S
Ohio

[Rich]

I've expanded my graphic depiction of the major elements on the wiki. It looks like we have an addition and a mod to be added. Once those are in I'll put the graph out. Correlation is pretty obvious, but causation remains elusive without some additional insight.

[Steve]

Rich:

I don't know if it is possible, but you might consider adding a column for "Other Equipment". For example, my airplane had a KN-62 DME added at the factory in London before I took delivery - added a few pounds...

[Rich]

Rich:

I don't know if it is possible, but you might consider adding a column for "Other Equipment". For example, my airplane had a KN-62 DME added at the factory in London before I took delivery - added a few pounds...

I thought about that. The problem is populating the table with additional information.

[Rich]

I don't see Lance's update yet but it wouldn't materially affect the usefulness of the current discussion. Weight in blue, empty CG in orange-ish:

I've included most options that are tracked in the wiki table and vary across the sample. Disclaimer: I took this data as entered. I have seen errors committed in weighing my plane and there's always the possibility of a data entry error here and there.

Some notes:
1. I only depicted the inclusion of G1000 and just left Aspen and the lone G500 (ser 286) lumped together
2. There are clearly three distinct groupings of weight. The only obvious bump is the first, with the introduction of the G1000 in 2004.
3. The second large bump looks to have started in 2007, with inclusion of a bunch of stuff. 701 is a curious outlier, though.
4. 511 has a question mark for WX. I chose to depict it as being present, but note that the relevant symbol is positioned differently.
5. 1100 has a question mark for NB. Comparing it to other adjacent airframes it looks like it's present. But its symbol is also positioned differently.
6. I didn't include the higher MTOW as almost all the airframes here include it.

Conclusion? The gross change starting in 2007 does pretty well correlate with the addition of several options. But though they certainly contribute, assigning causation from these options alone doesn't hold up, given their collective known mass. Likely this period is coincident with the addition of other miscellaneous features we aren't tracking. Was not this the period where Diamond started bundling, such as the XLS?

An example of related standard additions would be the larger rudder. It was required to implement the 50 gallon tanks but from what I see in the OSB, wording it became standard around then to simplify manufacturing.

[Rick]

701 is a curious outlier, though.

What's odd about 701? Since it's my bird, maybe I can shed some light on it...

[Rich]

701 is a curious outlier, though.

What's odd about 701? Since it's my bird, maybe I can shed some light on it...

The weight jumps up significantly, as I would expect given the equipment delta, and the CG gets right in line with the subsequent and apparently identically-equipped planes, but the weight only jumps by 40 lb, which is ~30 lb less than all those others, all well over 1800 lb..

[Lance Murray]

Can anyone say what the weight increase was for removing the ski tube and replacing with the 4-way baggage?

[Rich]

Can anyone say what the weight increase was for removing the ski tube and replacing with the 4-way baggage?

Roughly 8 lb.

Slight refinement: I checked and it showed as 7.4 lb net.